When We Next Meet Again
Ryoutarou looked up, and he was there. Not the Yuuto he remembered, not the Sakurai-san he remembered, just...
"Yuuto." Ryoutarou grinned, because though he knew he'd see his future brother-in-law again, he'd had to wait a while before Yuuto was standing before him like this.
"N—Ryoutarou," Yuuto corrected himself, uncomfortable with the switch.
And though Ryoutarou knew it would make Yuuto grumpier, he couldn't help but laugh, because if Yuuto was still trying to say "Nogami," it meant that he remembered. Ryoutarou hadn't been sure Yuuto would.
"You left it a little late," he said when Yuuto, as if on cue, scowled at him for laughing.
"Well, you know," Yuuto fidgeted, "Hana…got younger."
"She still calls you 'Yuuto,' you know," Ryoutarou said, amused by the roundabout explanation.
"…Hmrn." Yuuto tugged at his sleeve, and Ryoutarou thought he understood, a little; Yuuto had had to destroy his future self so that Yuuto could make a new one.
After an almost uncomfortable silence, Yuuto looked up through his bangs, and saw Ryoutarou's still all-too amused face, "Nan da?" he snapped.
Ryoutarou was startled into laughing, that for all he'd grown, Yuuto had still not lost the shyness that precipitated his grumpy temper, and reached forward for Yuuto's arm, and pushed him to the Milk Dipper. "Come on. Nee-san just finished making a new, sweet coffee."
Yuuto let himself be pushed, only partly resisting. He didn't tell Ryoutarou that he hadn't had the courage to see her himself, had needed someone to push him there, like Deneb had shoved him in front of Ryoutarou, and Ryoutarou pushing him with a firm strength Yuuto didn't remember, to the woman he had desperately wanted to see.
The sight of her took his breath away. He'd met her before, but it had been years since he'd seen her. She looked the same, but with that came the anxiety that he could still mess up and erase Hana from time altogether.
He almost bolted, but Nog—Ryoutarou had already shoved him, and he stumbled, catching her attention.
"Ara! Irasshaimase!" When she aimed that smile at him, he swallowed, and turned to Ryoutarou as he sat, glaring. Ryoutarou gave him a look back, that he thought might've meant, "wimp." But that was ludicrously out of character, and Ryoutarou didn't give him a chance to say anything as he moved away.
"Nee-san, sweet coffee for Yuuto, please," he told his sister as he moved to the far table, rag in hand, and Yuuto belatedly realized that Ryoutarou was still calling him "Yuuto," despite his own switch to "Ryoutarou," and that reminded him all over again that though things were similar, they were certainly not the same.
He almost did run out again, in spite of Ryoutarou's efforts, but, as if on some kind of conspiracy between the Nogami siblings Yuuto didn't yet understand, Airi was suddenly there, and any urge to use his legs was foiled, because they had melted at the sight of her.
This was an altogether foreign feeling, and yet a familiar one, as if all of the pangs for Airi and the altogether different pangs of watching her with other people, of seeing the evidence before his eyes, at the "Lost and Found" corner had led up to this one moment.
"You like sweet coffee?" Airi asked, as if she couldn't feel the intense banging of his heart and the suffocating nearness of someone you didn't know you loved before you were supposed to meet her. She placed the cup carefully on the table before him, and smiled. "What's your name?"
He almost couldn't answer. But Ryoutarou, behind the counter, was giving him a Look, an expression of challenge that didn't fit his face but which he'd seen before, because despite his bad luck he was still pretty stubborn when he wanted to be, and Yuuto choked out, "Sa-Sakurai Yuuto."
"Sakurai…Yuuto…" Airi repeated, and Yuuto stared at his cup, unwilling to look, unwilling to hope, when he felt her grin, and say, "What a pretty name."
Yuuto turned around then, because he'd heard those words before, when he hadn't known, hadn't been sure what he had been getting into, and she looked at him the same way she did then, with something just short of recognition, and a smile more radiant than he could ever remember it, and after a moment, he ducked his head, embarrassed.
Ryoutarou looked up, and smiled when he saw Yuuto was sipping the coffee and not making faces like he usually did.
Airi was glancing at him every so often, which was making Miura and Okazaki antsy, and this was better than Ryoutarou had hoped for, because it seemed to him that Yuuto and Airi had picked up their relationship right where they left it, before Yuuto had had to return to the past.
Time, he thought, is both brittle and strong.
Airi's "Special Blend for Sakurai-kun" was on the low chair behind him, and despite his doubts before, he thought that maybe Airi really had been waiting for Yuuto to appear, to make him that special blend. He would probably have to hide the book, in case she read the title again and made the connection.
Then again… He glanced up, to catch Airi wandering back to Yuuto's table, that book made her so happy. He wondered if he could bluff his way out of it. Probably not. Maybe he'd do better not to bring it up, period.
He looked to the door, which was open a crack, and winked. Deneb made a motion as if to dab at his eyes, and nodding appreciatively, quietly shut the door again.